


the runner

by sullypants



Series: night moves [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Sex, Summer Vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:21:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23830747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullypants/pseuds/sullypants
Summary: Betty is unfamiliar with the concept of distracted parents.Her life has been eighteen years of schedules, extracurriculars, and expectations set by her parents and shared with her older siblings.She is the last one left in the house.This is how Betty spends her final summer in Riverdale before college: she works, she runs, she deals with the fallout of her parents' separation, she sees her friends, she goes to therapy, and she spends time with Jughead Jones.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Series: night moves [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1713856
Comments: 58
Kudos: 133
Collections: 7th Bughead Fanfiction Awards - Nominees





	the runner

**Author's Note:**

> Follows, as you might imagine, [_the projectionist_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23789215).

  
  
  


_Remember little sister, look ahead._

  
  
  
  
  
  


She wakes at five-twenty, and is unable to drift back into sleep. 

She figures she might as well run before the sun and heat make it untenable. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


She follows Elm Street to Maple, and when Maple dead-ends at the edge of Fox Forest she enters the trailhead there, following a mental map of Riverdale’s hiking trails.

She skirts the edge of the river for several miles, crossing over into Greendale at the footbridge and reversing direction on the opposite side. 

She crosses Main Street and winds her way through several residential side streets, closing the loop by turning left off Oak Street, back onto Elm. 

It is nearly seven am, and she logs just over nine miles. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Betty is unfamiliar with the concept of distracted parents. 

Her life has been eighteen years of schedules, extracurriculars, and expectations set by her parents and shared with her older siblings. 

She is the last one left in the house.

She’s aware of the privilege that comes with being the youngest. But sometimes it also feels like a catch-22. She gets away with more than Charles or Polly ever did. Everything she is _allowed_ to do, she does because Charles and Polly fought for and won permission first. 

But she’s also the one her mother seems to think the _least_ of. 

It’s not that her mother has ever said anything to make Betty think she’s less loved than her siblings, or even less capable. 

Betty doesn’t know. Maybe it’s actually the complete opposite. Maybe she is the one her mother expects the most from; to be more accomplished than her siblings—to run faster, climb a career ladder higher, garner a more sterling reputation. 

Her father is harder to read. Charles had also spent time helping their father maintain the family’s cars before he’d left for college and career and adulthood, if never as many hours as Betty has to her name. But it never interested Polly, who—despite a decidedly whacky nature—disdained filth, loved order, and (as much as Betty adored her) could often bring a chill to Betty’s spine with a carefully calculated look. 

She is a bit like their mother in that way, Betty thinks. 

Betty wonders how _she_ is like her parents. It’s something she’s brought up many times in therapy. 

She admires her parents; she does not want to _be_ her parents. 

Learning to be okay with this, and to be okay with the possibility they might not understand this acceptance, still feels like a work in progress. 

But, Betty muses, everything is. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


This status quo is thrown into confusion with the announcement, shared over the dining table with Charles and Polly dialed into a three-way call on their mother’s cell, that her parents have decided to live apart. 

Divorce isn’t part of the conversation yet. Their father will be nearby, only a short drive across the river and over to Centerville. 

Their mother will stay in the house, with Betty. 

They will _both_ move Betty down to New York come Labor Day. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Suddenly, the house feels emptier. 

Betty’s daily life is not substantially different. She still sees her father every day, when she and her mother walk through the plate-glass door of the downtown storefront offices of the Riverdale Register. Her father sits behind the big dark-wood desk at the back-left corner of the room, her mother at the oak desk near the kitchenette, at right. 

Her father still drives to Riverdale on Sundays to work on the Stingray in the garage with Betty. He rarely enters the house further than the mudroom or the downstairs powder room. 

Her mother—quite suddenly freed from evening dinners or other attendant responsibilities that fall to a woman of a certain generation and age, married for however many years, mother of three—has an increasingly full social calendar.

To Betty’s understanding, her mother has so filled her evenings and weekends that there is a strong possibility she might end the season having spent more time away from the house than within it.

Betty muses that since this is the case, it might have made more sense for her father to have stayed. 

But then—she’s not sure. Her father’s schedule could be just as full. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Betty is honest with her mother about where she spends her evenings—up to a point.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Typically, Betty would devote several hours to exploring all of this in her journal, or speak to Dr. Glass about it during one of their sessions. Maybe she’d confide in Veronica. Normally she could call Polly to debrief, but now Betty feels Polly is too close to the situation. She needs a more distant perspective. 

There’s a kind of vulnerability in all of this, and though Betty is not new to fearing the concept or even confronting it, this time it feels different. There is so much about the situation that she cannot touch or even see. She has questions she is afraid to ask. 

Instead, she finds herself sharing some of this with Jughead during _Goodfellas_. 

She wonders out loud, as Henry and Karen enter the Copacabana, if this invalidates what her family has tried to instill in her, their values and beliefs—values and beliefs that she has spent more recent years sorting through, trying to understand, picking and choosing from to either hold herself, or put down in lieu of others. Her parents pull apart, and start again; in what way is Betty starting again? 

She may be _of_ her parents, but she has come to accept she does not have to _be_ her parents. 

Betty finds her sentences drifting, and she pauses.

“None of this makes sense, I realize,” she tells Jughead. “I think I’m just talking out loud.” She watches as Henry stuffs twenty-dollar bills into hand after hand. “I guess I don’t know what to think.”

He nods at her and stands to ready the next reel.

“You don’t have to yet,” he tells her. “I’m not sure if it’ll bring you any comfort, but I think I’m still trying to wrap my head around... _whatever_ my parents are. Or were.” He smiles at her, and Betty feels comfortable in the warmth of that smile. “Or even _did_ , I guess.”

Chin in her hand, she bobs her head back and forth, weighing his words.

“Whatever. Guess I’ll get there eventually.” 

He shrugs, and with a kind of casual nonchalance tells her, “I believe in you.”

Her cheeks warm.

“You have…,” he begins, and his head slowly turns to her, a deep seriousness across his face, “the cool, clear eyes of a seeker of wisdom and truth.”

Betty’s jaw drops and a mischievous smile pulls Jughead’s mouth wide.

“You _laughed_ when I suggested _How to Succeed in Business_! And you quote it at me?” She shakes her head and he laughs again, turns back to watch for the cue mark on the screen.

“I said I wasn’t scheduling it, Betts, I didn’t say I was unfamiliar.”

Betty smiles to herself as she watches him. He watches the screen. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


On what she thinks must be the hottest night of the summer, Betty locks her bedroom door and strips off her pajamas.

She has already showered, but she steps briefly under a spray of cold water to cool her skin.

She lays across the top of her sheets naked, and tries to sleep. The window is open, but there is no breeze; her curtains are still in the air. 

Arguing with her mother about the central air is sometimes not worth the effort it requires.

She tosses and turns, tries to find some feeling of comfort, to drift into sleep.

Her mind wanders, and she thinks of Jughead, and the projection booth, and _North by Northwest_. She thinks of Cary Grant’s hands cradling Eva Marie Saint’s skull, of hers on the back of his neck, of their limbs pretzeled together. She hears the sound of a train whistle in the distance, thinks about the tracks behind Pop’s. 

She brushes her palm back and forth over her hip, traces the line of her pelvic bone with her fingertip. Her hand follows the curve of her skin north, where it softly cups her breast. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Are you still journaling?” Dr. Glass asks her, and Betty considers the question before answering.

“Not as much,” she says. “I think maybe I haven’t needed to.” Dr. Glass nods, and Betty scans the bookshelf of her therapist's office from her perch on the couch; there are no new titles to observe. “I probably should though. Maintain it as a practice?”

Dr. Glass tilts her head and considers the question.

“You shouldn’t feel obligated to do it if you feel like it’s not necessary now. It’s always something you can return to.”

Betty nods, and her eyes move over the art that hangs upon the wall between her couch and Dr. Glass’s chair. It is a sea of textural, metal squares, varying depths, projecting off the wall several inches. Betty has always thought it would be soothing to run her hands over it.

“Have you met with Jen recently?”

Betty thinks through her internal calendar. “About a month ago? It might have been six or seven weeks.” 

Dr. Glass nods and asks, “Did you make any changes?”

Betty shakes her head. “No, still the same dosage. I think…,” she begins, before pausing. Dr. Glass is silent. “I think April was hard for external reasons, rather than anything internal or chemical.” She gestures toward her chest with her hand, before digging her palms underneath her thighs. 

Dr. Glass notices the motion, but she does not mention it. She smiles at Betty.

“Are you still spending time with Jughead?” she asks, and Betty nods, her ponytail bobbing.

  
  
  
  
  
  


With her parents’ change in circumstances also comes an unexpected measure of independence. 

As Betty sees it, this also translates to a widening of her personal responsibilities. Suddenly she has access to the washing machine, and can run her darks and brights together without care for their longevity. Her mother no longer hovers behind her, providing guidance up-to and no-further than the point at which she determines this is beyond Betty’s ken, and best left to mother-knows-best.

Her meals are still often spent with her mother, but certainly dinner is less of a rigidly-scheduled event and more frequently an instance of _what-do-you-feel-like-tonight?_

Betty finds so many more of her previously spoken-for hours suddenly...free.

She makes herself breakfast, indulges in cereal with greater frequency. Egg whites become a less prominent portion of her morning diet. 

She reads in the quiet of the backyard, laid out on a towel, her hair in a topknot and skin slathered in SPF, wearing in a bikini purchased under the influence of Polly—a suit that had previously caused her mother to purse her lips and raise her eyebrows. She flips onto her stomach, and unties the strings that knot the top behind her neck. 

She throws her clean clothes across her bed, and folds her own laundry. She listens to music, and dances across her room to stow a stack of t-shirts into the drawer they call home. 

No one is there to request she turn her music down. 

  
  
  
  
  


When she leaves for the drive-in near ten o’clock at night, her mother is sometimes not around to stop her, but when she is, Betty is waved off with no more than a _get home safe_.

  
  
  
  
  
  


At eighteen, the idea of a sleepover with friends suddenly feels new and precious. Summer is half over.

Stretched out over Veronica’s king-sized mattress, she kneads her toes into Kevin’s side as he details his latest Grind’em paramour. 

Kevin delineates the specifics of his date—the time, the place, the scenario, the actions. He speaks freely about his own body, and the body of his partner. Betty listens and scans a take-out menu.

“He finished, you know, much too quickly,” Kevin tells Veronica, who pours three glasses of wine upon her vanity. “I was sort of shocked.”

Veronica tilts her head thoughtfully, and hands him a full glass. 

“Maybe he was nervous,” she suggests magnanimously, and Kevin slants his eyes at her, making a nasally sound of disagreement. 

“Not the way _his_ mouth moved.” Veronica rolls her eyes and smiles. 

Betty scoffs quietly, almost to herself. “It’s hard to mess up a blow job.” She scans the Little Cicero’s menu. 

It’s a moment or two before she realizes the room is silent. Looking up, she sees Kevin eyeing her, his head cocked to the side thoughtfully. Veronica narrows her eyes. 

“Elizabeth,” Kevin nearly sings in glee. “Elizabeth, do you have something to share?”

Betty groans. 

“Don’t. Please, don’t,” she pleads, but Kevin has already turned to face Veronica, his face a mask of delight.

“What do you think of this?”

Veronica looks like she’s ready to burst, but before she can say anything, Kevin continues eagerly.

“Betty—,” he pulls himself closer to her on the bed. “What’s his dick like?” 

Betty feels shock cross her face, and she stutters. Veronica cackles.

“I am... _not_ answering that, Kevin.”

He nods. “But that means you _know_?” His eyes widen in encouragement. 

Betty swings her head back and forth between him and Veronica. She picks up her phone.

“What do we want to order?”

Kevin groans, but she continues.

“Cheese, pepperoni? Veggie supreme?”

Kevin and Veronica exchange a glance, and it takes all of Betty’s mental strength to not be bothered.

“One cheese, one veggie,” Veronica answers. She places her hand on Betty’s shoulder, and the warmth of it through her t-shirt feels like a kindness. 

“Teeth,” Kevin says, nodding emphatically at her as she dials, and she fails to suppress her grin. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


When she reaches the placebo week of her birth control, she hesitates.

She skips the row of white sugar pills, and punches out the first in the line of little yellow hormone pills in the next row.

  
  
  
  
  
  


On a Monday in July, Betty wakes feeling foggy. She wonders if it's pollen in the air.

She drags herself out of bed, and performs all her usual routines. She brushes her teeth, eats breakfast, and carpools to the Register with her mother.

She works for three hours before leaving her parents—sitting on opposite sides of the office and not facing each other—to head home and eat lunch. She flosses afterwards. 

She spends four hours in the afternoon at the Riverdale Public Library. Books are reshelved, Inter-Library Loan requests are collected. She helps supervise the post-story time coloring activity.

She comes home, eats a spoonful of peanut butter and a banana, and runs seven miles. 

Once she runs home, she spends a few minutes stretching on the grass in the backyard. Her mother has arrived home, and they eat dinner together.

She showers, combs her hair, and pulls on her pajamas. 

She crawls into bed, and lays awake. The last time she remembers glancing at the red glow of her alarm, it reads twelve twenty-seven.

When she wakes in the morning, she repeats the process nearly verbatim. The only variable is the mileage and the route. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


On the third day, three miles into her run and on a slightly-overgrown trail that loops around Thornhill and back toward the center of town through Eversgreen Forest, Betty feels something well up from deep within her chest. She feels her throat begin to close up and tears form in the corners of her eyes. 

She slows her pace until she is walking, and then she begins to sob. 

The sobs feel ripped from deep inside her chest and she bends over, hands on her knees.

After about ten minutes, it begins to ebb. She starts to walk, and before long she has returned to pace.

  
  
  
  
  
  


On the fourth day, after lunch, Betty opens her journal. She writes twenty words, before closing it again and taking a nap.

After dinner, Betty heads to the drive-in after showering, in lieu of climbing into her bed.

Jughead greets her with a kiss to the temple and a rub of her back. She smiles at him, but it feels like lifting a great weight.

  
  
  
  
  
  


About a third of the way through _Bonnie and Clyde_ , it’s clear he’s sensed something is wrong.

Betty feels terrible for failing to hide it. She’s not quite sure how to open this conversation, and so in the end she opts for being as blunt as possible.

“I just feel…” She thinks. “Sometimes I just feel wrong.” She shrugs and scrunches her nose and it feels like it takes everything in her to keep tears from forming on her eyelashes and falling down her face. But when she inhales, she can’t hide the snuffling noise she makes. 

It causes Jughead to whip his head away from the window to look at her. She avoids his gaze, preoccupies her hands with digging her finger under the ankle of her Converse, where her foot lies horizontally across her knee. 

After a few moments, he speaks.

“Is there anything I can help with?” he asks, and she shakes her head, smiles at him through the tears that cloud her eyes.

  
  
  
  
  
  


On the fifth day, over lunch, she gets distracted by her book. She texts Jughead to ask if he has read any Munro.

Before she realizes it, an hour has passed, and she is close to being late for her shift at the library.

  
  
  
  
  


After showering in the evening, she spends about thirty minutes scribbling furiously into her diary. 

She writes about her week at the library, about her book. She writes a bit about Jughead. 

She writes about how he makes her feel, both physically and emotionally. She uses coded terms; she’s not certain whether or not her mother still reads her diary. 

Still—when she is finished she takes care to bury it behind the third shelf of her bookcase, behind Mansfield, Morrison, and Munro. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


On the seventh day, halfway through her library shift, she realizes suddenly that it has disappeared again. She isn’t sure when it happened. Her day has felt nothing but normal. There has been no excess weight on her shoulders; she has felt light. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


At the drive-in, she sits on Jughead’s lap before _Psycho_ has even ended, watching for the next cue mark out the window. 

“Thank you for…” she begins. “Just.” She shrugs.

“What?” he asks. She shrugs again and waves a hand through the air. She doesn’t mean to thank him for the _projection booth_ , but she’s not sure how to convey what it is she is talking about. 

“ _God_ , Jug,” she jokes throatily, after a moment of searching. “Just let me appreciate you.” 

His eyes watch her with focus, until they soften and he nods.

“Okay.” He taps her hip, and she stands to allow him access to the supply reel. “Do I get to participate in you appreciating me, or…”

Betty laughs from her chest and a little less-than-gently shoves his shoulder, but he continues to grin. After a moment the serious look reappears in his eye.

“Really though, Betts. You don’t always have to be alone.” He threads the reel and looks up at her. “Right?”

She nods.

  
  
  
  
  
  


July passes. There are runs, there is time spent with Jughead in the cocoon of the projection booth, there are occasional afternoons spent with Kevin, or Veronica, or Cheryl. 

Her work at the Register and the library begins to wind down. She has deliberately chosen to keep August clear of major obligations, in order to spend time with her friends, in Riverdale, with Jughead, before the end of summer. 

At the end of July, her mother begins packing for a trip out-of-state, a trip originally planned by and for both her parents. 

Betty will stay home. Her father will visit on two consecutive Sundays, when they will work on the Stingray in the garage, but she will be nine days alone in the house.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She tells Jughead she’s looking forward to the change in pace. The house has felt quiet, but she’s still excited to spend time there alone. It’ll feel different, she thinks. 

“Can I visit?” Jughead asks.

Betty leans back from the window to look at him over the projector. It’s not until she realizes that he seems nervous that it occurs to her that he’s asking a different question. 

Her heart begins to beat faster, and she gives him a small grin. She nods. 

“Okay.” She feels her cheeks strain with her smile, and she tries to restrain herself. “Yeah, okay. It’d be nice for you to visit.” She digs into her back pocket for her phone.

Consulting her calendar app, she asks, “Does Monday night work for you? I could also do Tuesday.” She shrugs. “Actually, my mom’s on her trip, so basically I’m completely free.”

“Are you scheduling this?” he wonders out loud, a hint of amusement in his tone.

Betty looks up from her phone and frowns, considering. 

“Does that make it not sexy?”

He laughs, and it sounds like it comes from somewhere deep in his chest. 

“I like you, Betty.” He shakes his head. “I already like the things you do.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


She’s just finished making her bed when she hears the front door open and close, Jughead calling her name.

She hops down the stairs to meet him in the entryway, landing on the bottom step. He kicks off his shoes, nudges them under the bench next to hers. 

“Hey! You hungry?” she asks, and he raises his hands to show her a Pop’s to-go cup.

“No, just came from Pop’s. Got you a milkshake.” He gives the beverage a little jostle, a thoughtful look on his face. He steps closer and leans in to kiss her. On the step, she’s a little taller than him. Betty smiles into the kiss, and when he pulls away she takes his free hand and leads him to the kitchen.

She takes a sip of the milkshake then tilts the straw toward him questioningly, placing it in the freezer when he shakes his head. 

He removes his jacket, hangs it on the back of one of the stools that line the kitchen counter, and rests his hand on top of it as he watches her. 

Closing the fridge, she raises herself onto her toes and kisses him again. She nudges his shoulder backwards before taking his hand again, pulling him back towards the entry and up the stairs. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Betty resists the urge she so often feels when she’s decided to do something. 

Something decided is typically as good as done, and it’s this characteristic that has led her near the top of her class, brought her accolades from teachers, endeared her to the friends of her parents and the admissions office of an Ivy League university alike.

It is also an instinct that Betty feels she has staggered under. 

And so when she sits against her headboard, and pats the spot next to her to indicate Jughead should join her, she does not immediately jump him.

They chat. 

They discuss the upcoming schedule for the drive-in, the tantrum she’d witnessed from a toddler during her most recent volunteer shift at the library, the latest gossip she’d gotten from Kevin, JB’s complaints about her fellow band-campers. 

She holds his hand, plays with his fingers, and only stops once he leans in to kiss her. She wraps her arms around his shoulders, digs her hand into his hair.

  
  
  
  
  
  


He gets her off before she’s even shed her underwear. 

When she floats down, she reaches behind her back to unclasp her bra, dropping it over the side of the bed, and pushes at the hem of Jughead’s shirt. As he pulls it up and over his head, she shimmies out of her underwear and it joins her bra on the floor.

He leans back in to kiss her and she reaches for the button of his jeans. Her hands shake when he begins to move his mouth over her jaw, down her neck. She completely lets go of his waistband at the sensation of his mouth over her breast. She wraps her hand around his bicep to ground herself.

She’s distracted by the gentle rasp of his teeth on her nipple, and gasps when his hand finds its way back between her thighs.

When she comes again, she grips his bicep so hard that she’ll think later to take a peek at it, but it doesn’t bruise. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


By the time Jughead is finally naked and has rolled on a condom, Betty feels short of breath from how much she _wants_. 

He’s between her thighs, a hand on her shoulder, when he starts to move forward. She gasps, and he stops immediately, caution crossing his face.

Her hands reach up to his frame to his jaw as she assures him, “No, no! It’s okay, it’s fine.” But when he begins to push into her again she instinctively tenses.

A wash of frustration rushes through her, and she lays her hand over Jughead’s where it rests over her collar, rubbing back and forth slowly over his knuckles. Jughead ducks his head to kiss her opposite shoulder.

Betty breathes deeply and tries to relax her body. 

“Is it…” she begins. “Would it be weird if I were on top?”

Jughead’s head lifts, his eyebrows pulled together.

“Why would it be weird?”

She waves her hand in a futile gesture, cocks her head to one side to better meet his eyes.

“I don’t know, I just… I haven’t done this before.”

Jughead laughs, and she feels a burst of warmth in her chest at the sound. He smiles at her when he says, “Yeah, neither have I.” He gestures at the room with a nod of his head over his shoulder. “There’s no one else here, Betts,” and his voice is soft.

She cranes her neck to kiss him, and the awkwardness of the shuffle they perform to reposition themselves is thankfully elided by this meeting of their mouths.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She proceeds as slowly as she possibly can; it’s a forward-retreat-and-repeat sort of thing and Betty is inanely reminded of the history class presentation she gave in sixth grade on George Washington and the Continental Army. 

She realizes she can go no farther when their hips are flush. She waits for a sense of pain, a sharpness, but it’s only a tight fullness. It is certainly unfamiliar, but not unpleasant. She shifts a little, a test, and a jolt of heat spikes through her. Jughead seems to shudder below her, and his thumb traces the the invisible line of her pelvic bone.

Her eyes dart around the air above his head. This could be good, she decides.

She breathes deeply and meets his eye, sighs a laugh.

“Okay,” she says, and begins to move.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Betty knows she is not going to come.

But she wants Jughead to. She wants it with a desire she does not recognize, that feels entirely new. 

(She will wonder about this unfamiliar yearning for weeks, and it won’t be until much, much later that she thinks she is able to put a name to it.)

  
  
  
  
  
  


Jughead’s eyes are closed, what appears to be an expression of great concentration splashed across his face.

She feels out of breath. She feels like she has just competed in a cross country meet, like she has crossed the finish in first, besting her own time. 

“Juggie,” she murmurs, and he opens his eyes. “I want you to come.”

She feels a heat flash through her as she says it, and her own eyes squeeze shut at the sensation.

“Can you—,” she feels her words slip out of her grasp like they're sand through fingers, but she forces her eyes open. She feels a burn in her thighs and they shake, with fatigue or something else, she isn’t certain.

“Can we switch?” he asks, as though he’s pulled himself up from a deep well in order to form the words.

  
  
  
  
  


She braces one hand against the headboard above her and wraps the other arm around his shoulders. He comes within the cradle of her knees, a palm to her breast, and she kisses a line across his brow from temple to temple. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He stays the night. She wakes several times over the course of the evening, sensing an unfamiliar presence in her bed, but does not struggle to drift back into sleep. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“Do you want to get breakfast?” she asks. He scoffs.

“Always.”

Betty giggles. “Okay.” She rubs his shoulder before climbing out of bed, stretching her arms behind her.

“Do you want to shower first?” she asks him. 

“Is that an invitation?”

Betty spins around, her cheeks suddenly aflame—but likely nowhere near likely as red as Jughead’s are. His eyes are wide. She feels a laugh bubble up her throat and there’s also a warmth low in her abdomen. 

“That...slipped out, sorry. Sorry, I—” he stutters, and she feels any embarrassment ebb into a warm affection. She crawls back onto the bed to lean over him, resting her weight on a palm planted beside his head.

She leans down to kiss him, before pulling back only an inch or two to look between his eyes. 

She sees fondness in his gaze, too, senses his anxiety dissipate with her proximity. 

“I’ll go first,” she tells him. She leans down to peck his lips again, and once more, before pulling herself away and off the bed. “Polly’s bathroom is down the hall if you don’t want to wait. Towels in the hall closet.”

“Thanks,” she hears him say quietly, and when she turns to close the bathroom door she peeks back at him. He smiles at the ceiling.   
  
  
  
  


After the first time, Betty finds herself wondering when it can happen again. 

The following day, Jughead stops by before she can leave for her run. He’s brought his copy of _East of Eden_ for her, per her request. There is no late movie on Tuesdays, and so she isn’t likely to see him again before Thursday. 

He’s due at the drive-in in less than an hour, but Betty rationalizes that they are both new at this, and she’s feeling ambitious. 

She ends up forgoing the run, and decides she’ll make up the mileage by spreading it out over her next few runs. 

_Quickie_ , she thinks, considers the word in her head, letting her brain roll over the circumference of the _Q_ , dip into the valley of the _U_ , swing up and off the _K_ like a ski-jump.

  
  
  
  
  


She wakes to an empty bed one morning.

She finds him downstairs, eating a bowl of cereal on the couch in his boxers and a t-shirt. He smiles at her as he brings a spoonful to his mouth, and she returns it with a _good morning_ and a grin. She sits close to him, curling her legs underneath her.

Swallowing, he reaches for the mug of coffee on the coffee table. Betty notices the coaster that sits underneath it, thinks briefly about her mother in Montreal.

“Did you know you grind your teeth at night?” 

Betty looks up from the coaster and nods. 

“I have a night retainer for it,” she tells him. “Sometimes I actually wake up with a sore jaw.” 

“You haven’t been wearing it,” he says thoughtfully, as though to himself. 

She doesn’t say anything, and he holds the coffee cup out for her. She takes it from him and sips.

“Alice Cooper paid good money for that orthodontia, Elizabeth,” he teases, and she rests the mug on her thigh, index finger looped through the handle to steady it. 

When he finishes the cereal, he asks her if she wants to go back to bed. There’s nothing suggestive in his tone, and so she feels confused.

“You just had coffee, Jug.”

“Have you never taken a coffee-nap?” he asks her, and when she shakes her head, he tells her, “Oh, it’s excellent. You’re gonna wake up feeling amazing.” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


It is like a bridge has been built and Betty has found a new space to explore, different and unfamiliar trails through the woods to wander and get lost among, to find her way out of again.

Sometimes her mind will drift, and in the deep recesses of her brain she’ll daydream. 

She might be bent over the table in the projection booth, the table where Jughead maintains the reels. Her arms are held out to brace herself, skirt flipped over her waist and he behind her. She’ll feel a jolt of heat pierce her stomach at the thought, and she wonders if Jughead might feel a similar pang.

She often has merely to mention the idea to him. He has not yet been unwilling to meet her where she is. 

He’ll tilt his head in thought, in what she sees as so purely a Jughead sort-of-way, a thoughtful look in his eyes as he meets her gaze. She wonders what he’s thinking about in these moments. 

He’ll nod and say, “Okay.” 

Nothing ever happens before the lot is empty, but she’s grateful there’s a lock on the door of the projection booth nonetheless.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Once, as she’s driving them to Centerville to meet Archie and a few others for an all-ages show, she’s struck with the sudden desire to skip it entirely. The feeling of compulsion isn’t foreign to her, but the object is new. 

Head swiveling slowly between Jughead in the passenger seat and the road before her, she hesitates, considers—and decides to simply go for it.

Low risk, high reward. 

Once he’s assented, she drives them to Lovers’ Lane and parks as deeply in the woods as she can manage without risk of the car getting stuck. She climbs over the gearshift to straddle him, and thanks herself for the foresight in wearing a dress as he reaches behind her for her zipper. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


There are certain things she doesn’t tell Dr. Glass about. 

Betty has reached a point in their work together that she can sometimes hear what her therapist will say in response to her own questions. 

She’s sometimes fifty-fifty on actually asking. 

She knows she’s acting a little recklessly. She’s just not sure if it’s yet a cause for concern, or simply a delayed reaction—as if she’s making up for lost time. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


She thinks about all the ways Jughead is different from the Jughead she grew up alongside. She considers that perhaps she’s different, too, and just as quickly reminds herself that she is. 

She isn’t Betty Cooper, flailing freshman at the River Vixens try-outs. She isn’t Betty Cooper, sophomore varsity cross country runner. She’s not Betty, junior captain, editor of the Blue & Gold, the girl with bloody palms and tears of anger in her eyes. She isn’t even Elizabeth A. Cooper, RHS salutatorian. No one beyond the admissions office of Columbia, or perhaps some oddly thorough post-college employer, will ever care that she maintained a 4.2 in her final year of school. 

She decides who she is. She decides who she shares herself with, be it mind, heart, or body. 

She likes getting to participate in this with him. There’s a closeness to it that is different from all other intimacies in her life, but it feels to her that it’s not just about physical closeness. They are learning something about themselves, about each other. 

She doesn’t always come, but the satisfaction she feels when Jughead does, and his continued interest in an equitable share of pleasure, calls to mind the strange feeling she’d had the first time they’d been together. It starts to mold into shape in her brain, but it's still a malleable ball of clay—raw, slippery, mashed with fingerprints and divots.

Her honesty towards him startles even herself a little bit. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


“But what’s his junk like?”

Betty exhales loudly and moves further down the aisle, scanning the shelves.

“I tell you about the guys I date,” Kevin argues gleefully. 

Without looking back, she tells him, “Kevin, your obsession with my boyfriend’s genitalia is disturbing.”

Kevin gasps with delight.

“Boyfriend?”

Betty freezes, before quickly grabbing the waffle mix from the shelf. This...isn’t something they’ve discussed, and she’s never used the term _boyfriend_ to refer to Jughead to _herself_ , let alone to Jughead, or her friends, or her parents. She hasn’t even told Polly about him. She’s not sure where it came from, but she certainly doesn’t want to have this conversation with Kevin before she has it with Jughead. 

“Should we get heavy cream? Make whipped cream? I know you have vanilla and sugar.”

Kevin gives her a canny glare, but for once does not needle her. She turns and leads them toward the dairy department. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


She awakens with a jerk in the night, fear icing through her heart.

It’s not until she realizes she is in her bed, that Jughead is in her bed, a flash of light illuminates her room, and sheets of rain slap against the window, that she has been awoken by a clap of thunder. 

Another follows, and the window panes shake. Jughead reaches out and places his hand on her bicep. 

She burrows back into her sheets, lays her head next to his on her pillow, their noses inches apart, and waits for the storm to pass, for sleep to come again. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Betty wonders if perhaps Cheryl is feeling a little maudlin, judging by the Judy Collins soundtrack. 

Cheryl holds her cards close to her chest. Betty knows to be patient with her cousin. When she is ready, she will let you know. 

Cheryl whips her little red roadster around the bend of the road at speed and Betty tenses. 

Betty is used to her cousin’s driving, but her instincts sometimes get the better of her, and Cheryl notices when she grips the edge of the seat. 

She looks annoyed, even through the large lenses of her sunglasses, but when she speaks Betty is surprised by her words.

“My apologies, cousin.”

Betty nods. She thinks this might be one of the rare instances she needs to pry, and considers her approach.

“Jug ran _Rebecca_ at the drive-in last night,” she begins. “Thought of you.” 

Cheryl makes an indistinct noise in her throat, but says nothing. 

Betty retreats. 

But then—

“I was with Veronica last night.”

Betty nods, but stays silent. 

“She’s, as I’m sure you know, leaving for Cambridge next week.”

_Ah_ , Betty thinks.

_I do not fear the time_ , Judy sings, and Cheryl flicks the left turn signal with a slap of her hand. She sucks her teeth, peers into the rearview mirror, runs her ring finger along the side of her mouth to remove an invisible bit of stray lipstick, and rests her hand once again upon the gear shift. 

Betty hesitates as Cheryl makes the turn. She takes into account the road, and when she decides Cheryl isn’t likely to shift gears soon, places her palm over Cheryl’s hand and squeezes gently. 

Cheryl turns her head briefly to look at Betty, before returning her eyes to the road. She turns her palm upwards, and returns Betty’s squeeze with one of her own. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


On an August evening, she races herself through Fox Forest. The air is blue and the temperature has dropped eight degrees within the space of an hour.

Sweat beads against her temples, on her shoulder blades, behind her knees. It drips down her calves, down the length of her spine, the small of her back; it is absorbed by her socks, her shoes, by her singlet. 

Her ponytail slaps against her neck, the ends drenched. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Jughead runs _Bringing Up Baby_ on a late Saturday night. 

After he drops her off on Elm Street—and after a brief interlude in which the good night kiss they share in the truck becomes a little heated—she finds herself swaying her hips and humming as she brushes her teeth. 

She finds a version of the song in her head on her phone, one by Fats Waller, and plays it softly. She rests the phone next to the sink. It echoes slightly off the tiles of the bathroom, but she doesn’t think it risks waking her mother.

_Happiness and I guess all the things you’re sure to pine for_ , the song goes, and she spits into the sink. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


His hands cradle her head and his face is buried in the crook of her neck. She can feel his breath hot against her collarbone. 

It’s only the second or third time she comes when he’s still inside her, from the feel of how he moves within her. It’s a maddening drag and an unfathomable depth, a slow build, and later she’ll think it’s like the opposite of falling asleep.

She’s never been particularly vocal, and when she’s not been able to escape her own head, she’s been self-conscious of making any noise. But now she finally crests what feels like a wave that will not reach the shore, a softly guttural _fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck_ emanating from the back of her throat. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


She pulls air into her lungs, rubs her palms slow over his shoulder blades. His weight is heavy on top of her, his own breath loud but measured by her ear. She holds him inside as long as she can, until she feels his lips on her ear and he pulls away slowly.

She lays stills, closes her eyes, hears him get up to dispose of the condom. As she slowly comes back into her own mind, she thinks about how her high began its slow ebb as his had crested, and about how he’d gasped into her ear a stuttered _love you love love—_

  
  
  
  
  
  


Her skin feels warm, like the sun and heat from the day has settled within her and leeches out slowly. 

The music pours out through the speakers of Reggie’s car and it moves the ground beneath her feet, a dull pulse softened by a bed of pine needles.

She will not see the people around her again for some time. She will not see them until Thanksgiving, or until winter break. Some not even until the following summer—if then, if at all.

She leaves Jughead in the company of Dilton and Moose, and goes to find Veronica, entwined with Josie and Val, creating a dance floor all their own. They open their arms to her and she reaches out to them, and they begin to move together. Others surround them, and soon they move as one. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


When she finds Jughead again, solo on a boulder about twenty feet from the keg, her eyes are feeling a little slow from the alcohol. His eyes are glassy, but when he spots her walking toward him, they seem to focus. 

She seeks a place on his lap and claims it. She brushes the hair back from his temples and meets his eyes. She leans down to kiss each of his brows in turn.

“Are you bored?” she asks, and he shakes his head. 

“Are you having fun?” 

She nods. His finger traces a tan line down the back of her shoulder blade and she resists a shiver. 

She leans down to kiss him, and when she pulls back, he chases her lips with his own. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


The morning after Reggie’s blow-out, they indulge again in Pop’s breakfast menu. Betty muses to herself that soon she’ll no longer have such easy access to Pop’s waffles, topped high with cream and strawberries, just the way she likes them.

(She tries and fails to not think about what else she’ll no longer be able to easily reach out for.)

“Parents’ weekend is in October.” She mentions. “It’s Columbus Day weekend, but they’re only coming in on Friday night and leaving Saturday.”

He nods, swirls a forkful of pancake around a puddle of syrup. “Not very kosher,” he jokes. 

“Does Albany do parents’ weekend?” she asks, trying not to let her anxiety bubble up her throat and out through her mouth.

He finishes chewing.

“Yeah, also Columbus Day.” He takes a sip of his coffee, watches his plate. “My parents aren’t coming though. Probably won’t work out with their schedules.” He shrugs, and she nods.

A thought occurs to her. She bites her tongue, but then lets herself speak it out loud.

“Do you want to visit me that weekend?” She moves her glass of water slightly to the left, then back again slightly to the right, and the condensation makes it a noiseless glide. “Since they’re only coming for Saturday.” She takes a sip and avoids his eye.

When she looks up, she finds him watching her.

“It’s only a three-hour train ride,” she tells him. “Or a three-hour bus ride.” She waits a beat and then adds, “Doesn’t say much for the trains or the traffic, I guess.”

He smiles and looks down again, reaches out a fork to spear a sausage from her plate, swirls it around the syrup left on his own.

“Yeah,” he nods. “I should visit.” He smiles at her. “If you don’t mind.”

She shakes her head.

“No, no,” she bites at the inside of her cheek. “I’d like for you to visit.”

He smiles at his plate. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Several days before Labor Day, her father drives a rented van to the house on Elm Street, and her mother helps her load it with boxes.

  
  
  
  
  
  


She follows the old rail trail through Fox Forest. It loops around through the Southside, near the trailer park, and passes the drive-in. She runs the circumference of the drive-in's fence, pauses to take in what the screen looks like from behind. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


Jughead visits her on the Friday before she leaves Riverdale.

They walk the length of Elm Street and when they turn the corner onto Maple, out of sight of the Cooper house, he stops and turns to her.

He wraps his arms around her shoulders, pulls her flush with his chest, and her own wrap firmly around his torso, hands reaching up to the planes of his shoulder blades.

His mouth to her ear, she hears him whisper “I love you, Betty Cooper.” She smiles and squeezes him impossibly closer.

“I know,” she whispers back. “I love you, too.” 

They walk back down Elm Street, and he continues on past the Cooper house, toward Archie’s and the truck parked in front of it.

“I’ll see you later,” she calls out. He smiles and waves.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Epigraph is from Tom Rush's "Child's Song." 
> 
> I thought hard about including an epigraph from _The Bell Jar_ —which, along with _The Great Gatsby_ , might be one of the foremost summer vibes-y books of my late teen years, but the fit wasn't quite there. I stand by that book though.
> 
> So concludes this little universe. Never say never, but I’d like it to age a bit, both literally and figuratively, and perhaps revisit it sometime down the road. 
> 
> Anyway—thank you for reading, and for sharing your thoughts and encouragement, or even just hitting the kudos button (interaction can be hard sometimes, I'll be the first to admit)—writing is a v solitary activity, until you share it, and then (if you did it right) it becomes more than the sum of its parts because it's no longer just your own. So thanks for your participation <3
> 
> Extra thanks to stillscape for sharing her expertise.


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